Marcelo in the Real World Chapter 29 Summary

  • Time to meet Ixtel. Marcelo goes with Garcia to the Sisters of Mercy.
  • And as luck would have it, it's also time for another lesson in class distinctions: this place is super old and run-down. It used to be a one-family mansion back in the day, but the sisters tell Marcelo they can't even imagine what that would have been like. They laugh at the very idea.
  • Sister Juana thinks Marcelo's a hero, and she gives him some lemonade and turns on the fan for him.
  • He hears that someone's crying down the hall. As it turns out, this is a home for troubled girls, and Ixtel's been living there since her mom died.
  • The crying escalates to glass breaking, and Sister Juana and Garcia take off: Juana to see what's up with the upset person, Garcia to run some errands for the sisters.
  • As Marcelo sits in the room alone, a girl named Maria comes in. She knows he's there to see Ixtel, and she says she'll go get her.
  • Marcelo goes outside to sit in the courtyard and wait for her. When she appears, she gives him as much of a smile as you can give with half your face missing.
  • The surgery, she says, has been scheduled. She thanks Marcelo profusely for doing the right thing.
  • He asks her if she's happy here, and she says she is. Two years after the accident, when she turned 16 and her mother died, she started doing drugs and prostituting, and the sisters helped her get clean and off the streets.
  • Now she wants to go back to high school and start a new life with a new face.
  • She tells Marcelo that part of how you recover is that you learn to accept your ugly parts and forgive yourself. 
  • When Garcia returns and it's time to leave, she asks if she can give Marcelo a kiss. He lets her kiss his forehead. 
  • She tells him it's half a kiss, but it's all she's got.